For 'relative' (from
{Is creationism winning in Turkey & Korea?} thread):
quote:
See The Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Part III thread for more information and to discuss this one further (it would be off topic here).
No thanks. The forum there is a science forum, and the deck on this forum is stacked. Maybe if it was in the coffee house.
Okay. Let's take it one step at a time, with step 1 being:
Bristlecone Pines
By counting tree rings and matching the overlapping patterns of growth from live to dead trees, scientists have developed a tree-ring chronology of nearly 10,000 years using wood from the Schulman Grove area, California (one tree still living is 4600 years old). Quotes from the
Bristlecone pine website:
The oldest known living specimen is the "Methuselah" tree, sampled by Schulman and Harlan in the White Mountains of CA, for which 4789 years are verified by crossdating. An age of 4,844 years was determined post-mortem (after being cut down) for specimen WPM-114 from Wheeler Peak, NV.
Pinus longaeva is generally regarded as the longest-lived of all sexually reproducing, nonclonal species, with many individuals known to have ages exceeding 4000 years. Due to the resinous wood and extremely cold and arid habitat, decay of dead wood is extremely slow, and wood on the ground in some stands has ages exceeding 10,000 years. This has permitted building a continuous chronology of more than 8,000 years, which in turn has been used to calibrate the radiocarbon timescale. The species has been widely used in dendroclimatic reconstruction and in several classic studies of timberline ecology.
The "Methusulah" specimen was cut down in 1957, so by this one tree alone the minimum age for the earth is 4,836 years (and counting). Another site with Bristlecone Pine data is
Great Basin National Park:
The Forest Service granted permission for the researcher to take core samples from several old-looking bristlecone pines and to cut one down. Bristlecone pines often grow in a twisted fashion. Also, one section of the tree may die off even a couple thousand years before another part. This means it can be very difficult to capture the oldest part of the tree in a core sample. The tree that was cut down in 1964--while still living--has since become know to some as "Prometheus."
Counting revealed that Prometheus contained about 4,900 growth rings. This made it the oldest known tree. Currently the oldest known living tree, about 4,600 years old, is in the White Mountains of California. Chances are good that there are other, older, bristlecones that have not been dated.
Also see
"The Ancient Bristlecone Pine"and
"California's Ancient Bristlecone Pines, the Oldest Living Things"
Minimum age of the earth = 8,000 years based on this data.
Notice three things:
(1) a single tree that was 4,844 years old when cut down in 1957,
(2) a continuous chronology for 8,000 years with no evidence of disruption
(3) multiple specimens that all give the same results.
How can this occur and NOT be consistent annual rings for the duration of the record?
When we have a valid hypothesis for this occurance we can move on to the next correlation item, and test the hypothesis.
Enjoy.
admins may chose to move this to be a "great debate" if (a) 'relative' takes up the challenge and (b) the thread gets overly cluttered with other posts.
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